The invention relates to an inserting station for envelope-filling machines, having a base plate which is fastened on a machine framework and onto which enclosures or sets of enclosures which are to be inserted into envelopes are pushed intermittently from an enclosure-collating path, and having an inserting device for inserting the enclosures or sets of enclosures into envelopes provided open beside the base plate. The inserting device generally contains a carrier which can be moved back and forth over the base plate transversely to the conveying direction of the enclosure-collating path and inserting fingers which are articulated in a pivotable manner on the carrier and of which the free ends, by means of an actuating mechanism, can be lowered onto the base plate in an operating stroke of the carrier, so that the enclosures or sets of enclosures on the base plate can be gripped and pushed into envelopes, and can be raised up from the base plate in a return stroke of the carrier, so that, during this return stroke, new enclosures or sets of enclosures can be pushed onto the base plate from the enclosure-collating path.
If the carrier is connected to the lower end of a pivoting lever which, at its upper end, is mounted at a specific distance above the base plate on a pivot axis parallel to the conveying direction of the enclosure-collating path, then only when there is a considerable distance in the vertical direction between this pivot axis and the level of the base plate is it possible for a horizontal operating stroke and return stroke of the carrier parallel to the said base plate to be approximated, so that the position of the inserting fingers relative to the plane of the base plate at the start and at the end of the operating stroke and return stroke is very different in practical cases. In order to restrict this difference in the positions of the inserting fingers, in known designs the latter are designed with a comparatively great length.
In other known designs of the inserting device, the carrier, on which the inserting fingers are articulated in a pivotable manner, forms a constituent part of a three-link rectilinear guide mechanism which, in addition to the carrier, has two further links of different length, the position of the articulation points and the length of the links being selected such that one end of the carrier, at which the attachment point for the inserting fingers is located, approximates a rectilinear movement horizontally over the base plate.
However, this intrinsically advantageous design has a comparatively large number of individual parts and needs a separate drive via a crank belonging to a drive shaft, a crank rod and a lever attachment of one of the links of the three-link mechanism mounted fixed to the framework.